GM Joe?

The article in The Village voice is worth it just for the line: "If it walks like a man, quacks like a man, and photosynthesizes like a man, then it's a man."

And we won't add anything to the effect that we still need him as much as a fish.... It wouldn't be fair. And anyway, the GM fish might really enjoy pedalling round to stretch those additional enhanced limbs.

Miff Stomp Sulk

Went off from one of the links in the Indy's (pointedly not putting a hyperlink in) daily emailed headlines to find they now no longer have all the online content free. Can't find any warning that this would be the case in past emails, though there's an ad for the improved search engine. Don't object to the need to make money. But, it's retrospective. So all past links to, say, Mark Steel's articles, are now going to lead to a page asking for dosh (I suppose I ought to go back and do something about the links. Sigh. They're going to be less than useful, even to the ravens themselves, without coughing up. Sighs.). And just like store loyalty cards, it's a different online payment system. We're still--just--resisting setting up a PayPal account, tho' we buy from eBay often enough that maybe we ought to give in on that one too. (Hell, we signed up for Nectar on Tuesday, when a second store from which we buy kiddy clothes joined the scheme. Tesco got us too.)

I suppose, in a competitive market, at least until corporate giants buy it all up, it's inevitable. So who's for an aggregating central site where one can check up on all the various online payment methods one uses and make a single payment to cover them all? Analogous to the services some online banks offer. Or could I include a PayPal account in one of those?

Ooh! Pretty!

Went out to get stamps and post letters. And got these: Fruit & Veg Stamps

Cute.

Also scavenged an abandoned lid from a packet of Smarties. An "a" too. The collection's almost getting to the stage where Looby Loo will be able to spell something useful with them. But when did they change to a uniform orange colour?

Ooh, this sounds fun

Le Pen invite sparks protest

Now, where did we last see our membership card (oh, look, we're not going to apologise, it was a long time ago that we joined and we did have a (brief) young and impressionable phase, really), assuming life means life and that we in any way resemble a photo that ancient?

Now is the misspelling of "liaise" (the verb that ought not speak its name) the Grauniad's fault or the CUSU spokesperson's?

Site of the Day, Week and Probably Longer

Courtesy of a link in the NY Times Technology section: The Proceedings of the Old Bailey. (The article's here.)

It's searchable; it's got pictures of the original documents plus transcriptions; it's got explanatory background; it's got crimes we've never even heard of. "Barratry?" What's that when it's at home?* So far, only the years 1714 to 1759 have been covered. Sadly that's still 22,000 trials we want to read through.

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* In this context, the OED's fourth definition of "The offence of habitually exciting quarrels, or moving or maintaining law-suits; vexatious persistence in, or incitement to, litigation." seems the best fit.